Thursday, February 20, 2014

Drawings Presented to UN Serve As Evidence of Ongoing Oppression in North Korea

Kim Kwang Il, a survivor and rare escapee of one of North Korea's numerous gulags, put his artistic touch to work when he presented eight drawings of his own creation to the UN Human Rights Commission depicting the horrendous conditions that over 200,000 innocent people are currently being subjected to behind one of the world's last and sturdiest Iron Curtains. The images drawn by the brave survivor illustrate the torture methods employed in the Communist labor camps as well the startling desperation of starving prisoners who are often forced to catch and eat snakes and rats out of sheer hunger. The drawings were a chilling reminder of the atrocities occurring regularly and systematically within a self-isolated nation only a missile's flight distance from our own west coast. Unfortunately the UN's response did nothing to warm the blood. Per usual it issued a strong suggestion that global leadership (namely the democratic and militarily capable West) cooperate in an effort to prosecute the North Korean regime for its countless crimes against humanity. Which is another way of saying they suggest we commit to combat that nobody will follow through on in order to topple a horrifying regime that has somehow acted with complete impunity for several decades now.

Aside from the UN's lackluster approach to the problem of the Last Asian Bastion of Soviet Style Communism there is also a significant hypocrisy in America's attitude toward the events that are perpetuated daily with stunning animosity in North Korea. It seems that the nation's lack of credible danger to us makes their oppression of millions of Koreans as well as their more immediate threats to our close ally South Korea more consciously exscusable. This is just more evidence of the weird way the US decides what is and is not a humanitarian crisis in need of immediate intervention and elimination. We criticize our involvement in overthrowing murderous dictators and tribal warlords in places like Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and Vietnam, but then also criticize our lack of action in places like Rwanda, Sudan, Ukraine, etc. Maybe it's the flip flopping of our foreign policy caused by the four to eight year exchange of executive power between men whose political parties are rarely represented consecutively by the same animal. Maybe it's our fear of committing to a cause for longer than six weeks and the exhaustive torrent of self righteous but ultimately temporary responses to sudden international tragedies. And perhaps it's a resurfacing sense of isolationism permeating from the fact that we haven't truly won a war since an insane Nazi was waging lightning wars in Europe.

Regardless, where do the people of North Korea fall in all this?

Sadly through the cracks of uncertainty and inconsistency. The laughably egotistical dynasty now headed with unexpected ruthlessness by Kim Jong Un will continue to enslave and slaughter millions while simultaneously making bizarre threats against the West that will ultimately go ignored (their nuclear warheads don't mean much by modern standards without sophisticated missile technology). The UN will write nasty letters and vote unanimously to write more nasty letters pending further news from the DMZ. The best hope for the fall of the Hermit Kingdom is that it's predictably inefficient state-owned and operated industries will run the nation into a hard ground that shakes it enough to collapse. But even that may not happen soon since China offers billions of dollars in aid every year to North Korea just so that the country won't collapse and send millions of uneducated, starving frantic refugees into northern China.

Still the pictures drawn by Kim Kwang Il are worth a look and I urge you look over them.